I. Field
The present invention relates generally to data communication, and more specifically to pilots suitable for use in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems.
II. Background
A MIMO system employs multiple (NT) transmit antennas and multiple (NR) receive antennas for data transmission. A MIMO channel formed by the NT transmit and NR receive antennas may be decomposed into NS independent channels, which are also referred to as eigenmodes, where NS≦min{NT, NR}. Each of the NS independent channels corresponds to a dimension. The MIMO system can provide improved performance (e.g., increased transmission capacity and/or greater reliability) if the additional dimensionalities created by the multiple transmit and receive antennas are utilized.
In a wireless communication system, data to be transmitted is first modulated onto a radio frequency (RF) carrier signal to generate an RF modulated signal that is more suitable for transmission over a wireless channel. For a MIMO system, up to NT RF modulated signals may be generated and transmitted simultaneously from the NT transmit antennas. The transmitted RF modulated signals may reach the NR receive antennas via a number of propagation paths in the wireless channel. The characteristics of the propagation paths typically vary over time due to a number of factors such as, for example, fading, multipath, and external interference. Consequently, the transmitted RF modulated signals may experience different channel conditions (e.g., different fading and multipath effects) and may be associated with different complex gains and signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs).
To achieve high performance, it is often necessary to characterize the response of the wireless channel. For example, the channel response may be needed by the transmitter to perform spatial processing (described below) for data transmission to the receiver. The channel response may also be needed by the receiver to perform spatial processing on the received signals to recover the transmitted data.
In many wireless communication systems, a pilot is transmitted by the transmitter to assist the receiver in performing a number of functions. The pilot is typically generated based on known symbols and processed in a known manner. The pilot may be used by the receiver for channel estimation, timing and frequency acquisition, data demodulation, and so on.
Various challenges are encountered in the design of a pilot structure for a MIMO system. As one consideration, the pilot structure needs to address the additional dimensionalities created by the multiple transmit and multiple receive antennas. As another consideration, since pilot transmission represents overhead in the MIMO system, it is desirable to minimize pilot transmission to the extent possible. Moreover, if the MIMO system is a multiple-access system that supports communication with multiple users, then the pilot structure needs to be designed such that the pilots needed to support the multiple users do not consume a large portion of the available system resources.
There is therefore a need in the art for pilots for MIMO systems that address the above considerations.